Russias most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall.
A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens, Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile defense conference in Moscow attended by senior U.S. and NATO officials.
The threat comes as talks about the missile defense system, which the U.S. and its allies insist is aimed at Iranian missiles, appear to have stalled.
We have not been able to find mutually-acceptable solutions at this point and the situation is practically at a dead end, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said.
Ellen Tauscher, the U.S. special envoy for strategic stability and missile defense, insisted the talks about NATO plans for a missile defense system using ground-based interceptor missiles stationed in Poland, Romania and Turkey were not stalemated.
But she acknowledged Wednesday that the recent elections in Russia and the upcoming elections in the U.S. make it pretty clear that this is a year in which were probably not going to achieve any sort of a breakthrough.
She reiterated that the U.S.-built system, still in development, is being designed to shoot down Iranian intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, not Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
Russian officials insist that the system has the capability to shoot down their ICBMs, thus robbing their nuclear deterrent of its credibility and destabilizing the Cold War-era balance of mutually assured destruction.
Neither the State Department nor the Pentagon had any immediate comment on the Russian threat Thursday.
Continued on Page 47
#1
Shared Security And Mutual Common Ground & Confirmation Of Mutual Co-Operateration Persists Sooner Than : Anticipated : Peaceful Negotiations Will Endure , WATCH !
Posted by: Don Vito Lover of the Trolls3439 ||
05/03/2012 17:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Russia's most senior military officer said Thursday that Moscow would preemptively strike and destroy U.S.-led NATO missile defense sites in Eastern Europe if talks with Washington about the developing system continue to stall.
Only in a feckless Obama administration would the Russians make such threats.
#3
Weakness in the face of islamofascism is bound to provoke forces besides those of islamofascism.
When the last remaining superpower is challenged on her own territory, goes to war and loses the war the consequences will necessarily be global.
Non nuclear sh*tty little Afghanistan could slaughter thousands in the US without serious consequences. Why should nuclear Russia fear the American reaction to an attack not on the US but a NATO country?
It is far from clear the the US security umbrella covers even US territory. How can American security guarantees for other nations be taken seriously?
The 'World without America' (which I did not wish for) is a reality that allies of the US have to accept and must adapt to.
#4
How's that Reset Button and "post re-election flexibility" working out for ya, Champ. Russians can smell a needy p*ssy. They know you inherently want to delete the Missile Defense Shield and are willing to sell us out.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/03/2012 21:29 Comments ||
Top||
#5
Act Of War. Someone may want to remind them of just how vulnerable they are to US submarines in terms of making Russian ships disappear, and how we have all kinds of fun restive minorities we can fund inside their border.
#6
I still think Russia is more worried about missile sales than anything else. Beyond that, what happened to giving Obama room? Perhaps that died when the sound bite got out, or this is fake barking to give Obama the chance to be a foreign policy hero.
(CNN) -- On May 16 last year, a 22-year-old Austrian named Maqsood Lodin I'm not sure why, but that name doesn't sound Austrian.
was being questioned by police in Berlin. He had recently returned from Pakistain ...that's our partner in the WoT in South Asia...
via Budapest, Hungary, and then traveled overland to Germany. His interrogators were surprised to find that hidden in his underpants were a digital storage device and memory cards. That's the place to put 'em if you don't want to call attention to them, you betcha...
Buried inside them was a pornographic video called "Kick Ass" -- and a file marked "Sexy Tanja."
Several weeks later, after laborious efforts to crack a password and software to make the file almost invisible, German Sherlocks discovered encoded inside the actual video a treasure trove of intelligence -- more than 100 al Qaeda documents that included an inside track on some of the terror group's most audacious plots and a road map for future operations.
Future plots include the idea of seizing cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks by Pak cut-throats that paralyzed the Indian city of Mumbai in November 2008. Ten gunnies killed 164 people in that three-day rampage.
Terrorist training manuals in PDF format in German, English and Arabic were among the documents, too, according to intelligence sources.
U.S. intelligence sources tell CNN that the documents uncovered are "pure gold;" one source says that they are the most important haul of al Qaeda materials in the last year, besides those found when U.S. Navy SEALs raided the late Osama bin Laden's ... who no longer has to waste time and energy breathing... compound in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... , Pakistain, a year ago and killed the al Qaeda leader.
One document was called "Future Works." Its authorship is unclear, but intelligence officials believe it came from al Qaeda's inner core. It may have been the work of Younis al Mauretani, a senior al Qaeda operative until his capture by Pak police in 2011.
The document appears to have been the product of discussions to find new targets and methods of attack. German Sherlocks believe it was written in 2009 -- and that it remains the template for al Qaeda's plans.
Investigative journalist Yassin Musharbash, a news hound with the German newspaper Die Zeit, was the first to report on the documents. One plan: to seize passenger ships. According to Musharbash, the writer "says that we could hijack a passenger ship and use it to pressurize the public."
Musharbash takes that to mean that the forces of Evil "would then start executing passengers on those ships and demand the release of particular prisoners."
The plan would include dressing passengers in orange jump suits, as if they were al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and then videotaping their execution.
Lodin and a man called Yusuf Ocak, who allegedly traveled back to Europe with him, are now on trial in Berlin where they are pleading not guilty. Ocak was locked away Yez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! in Vienna two weeks after Lodin's arrest.
According to a senior Western counterterrorism official, their names were on a watch list, and when they handed over documents at a European border crossing, their names registered with counterterrorism agencies.
Both men have pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." to terrorism charges. Ocak is also charged with helping to form a group called the German Taliban Mujahedeen, and is alleged to have made a video for the group threatening attacks in Germany.
Prosecutors believe the pair met at a terrorist training camp in Pakistain's tribal territories and were sent back to Europe to recruit a network of jacket wallahs.
"We do not know what those men were up to but there are certain files of information that would make it plausible that they were probably thinking of a Mumbai-style attack," says Musharbash.
In the fall of 2010, a year after the document was written, European intelligence agencies were scrambling to investigate a Mumbai-style plot involving German and other European cut-throats -- which sparked an unprecedented U.S. State Department travel warning for Americans in Europe.
"I think it is plausible to think that the 'Future Works' document is part of that particular project," says Musharbash.
"Future Works" suggests al Qaeda was an organization under great pressure, without a major attack to its name in several years, harried by Western intelligence. If anything, its predicament is even more dire today.
"The document delivers very clearly the notion that al Qaeda knows it is being followed very closely," Musharbash tells CNN. "It specifically says that Western intelligence agencies have become very good at spoiling attacks, that they have to come up with new ways and better plotting."
Part of the response, according to the document, should be to train European jihadists quickly and send them home -- rather than use them as fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistain -- with instructions on how to keep in secret contact with their handlers.
What emerges from the document is a twin-track strategy -- with the author apparently convinced that al Qaeda needs low-cost, low-tech attacks (perhaps such as the recent gun attacks in La Belle France carried out by Mohammed Merah) to keep security services preoccupied while it plans large-scale attacks on a scale similar to 9/11.
Those already under suspicion in Europe and elsewhere would be used as decoys, while others would prepare major attacks.
That is yet to materialize, but Musharbash believes a complex gun attack in Europe is still on al Qaeda's radar.
"I believe that the general idea is still alive and I believe that as soon as al Qaeda has the capacities to go after that scenario, they will immediately do it," he says.
While "Future Works" does not include dates or places, nor specific plans, it appears to be a brainstorming exercise to seize the initiative -- and reinstate al Qaeda on front pages around the world.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11137 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
#1
how appropriate - religious terror Pr0n embedded in real Pr0n. So like the AQ drug and gay sex parlors uncovered in the Fallujah siege.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
05/03/2012 2:32 Comments ||
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#2
Both men have pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges.
Claimed the encrypted tapes were merely composites ?
The British Columbia hang glider pilot whose passenger fell to her death over B.C.'s Fraser Valley will remain in custody while a memory card he's alleged to have swallowed passes through his body.
[An Nahar] The Somali man who attacked a Danish cartoonist for caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed will serve 10 years in prison before being expelled from Denmark, the Supreme Court confirmed Wednesday.
"There is no reason to change the 10-year prison sentence," Denmark's highest court ruled, stressing that Mohammed Geele, who attacked cartoonist Kurt Westergaard at his home on January 1, 2010, with an axe, was guilty of "attempted terrorism".
The court also confirmed that once he has served his sentence the now 30-year-old Somali citizen would be expelled from Denmark and banned from ever returning.
Geele, who has been living in the Scandinavian country since he was 14 and has a wife and four young children there, had appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court, insisting the attack had nothing to do with terrorism and that he had only been trying to frighten Westergaard.
He was initially sentenced to nine years behind bars in February 2011, but an appeals court hiked his sentence four months later to 10 years.
"I feel somewhat sorry for this Geele. But it is satisfying for me to see an end to this case," Westergaard himself told the Ritzau news agency Wednesday.
"Such an action is indeed terrorism. He attacked me, but he affected all of society," he said.
The Somali broke into 76-year-old Kurt Westergaard's home near Aarhus in central Denmark on January 1, 2010 wielding an axe and screaming, "You must die! You are going to hell!" according to the cartoonist's testimony last year.
Geele, who is suspected of having links to the Somali Islamist movement Al-Shebab, had threatened police arriving on the scene with his axe and knife and was shot twice before being placed under arrest.
Westergaard has faced numerous death threats since the publication of his drawing, the most controversial of the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that appeared in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005, and which sparked angry and at times deadly protests across the Moslem world.
Wednesday's ruling came as four people face trial in Denmark for "attempted terrorism" for allegedly plotting to massacre staff at the same paper over the cartoons.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[An Nahar] The Somali man who attacked a Danish cartoonist for caricaturing the Prophet Mohammed will serve 10 years in prison before being expelled from Denmark, the Supreme Court confirmed Wednesday.
